For decades, scientists have found creative ways to test gear for use in space -- from simulating missions in the ocean to signing up volunteers in Hawaii to consume space food. But, the latest experiment funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) may take the cake.

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory Spacecraft Engineering Department was commissioned to build a frictionless 37-ton air hockey table to test a new satellite docking system, according to Gizmodo. The one-of-a-kind prototype accurately simulates the physics of space and keeps objects suspended in air. A successful docking system would allow older satellites to be mov… Continue reading...

A Washington, D.C. man got a surprise package at his door after ordering what he thought was a television from Amazon.

Instead, Seth Horvitz opened the large box Tuesday evening to find a military-grade assault rifle, according to Wired.

"When I saw some metal parts inside the box, I thought, 'Maybe this is a TV stand or mount or something," he told the magazine. "When I realized it was an assault rifle, it was pure shock and disbelief."

Horvitz had ordered a Westinghouse 39-inch LCD television from the ecommerce retailer for around $320. But after discovering the weapon, he contacted local police, who then confiscated the box. Officers told Horvitz the Sig Sauer 716 patrol rifl… Continue reading...

Scientists think the spot on the Martian equator where the Curiosity rover landed looks familiar, comparing the landscape to California's Mojave Desert.

Curiosity rover sent its first shots back to Earth Wednesday since landing in Gale Crater, including a black and white self portrait and a panorama, the AP reports.

"The first impression that you get is how Earth-like this seems looking at that landscape," chief scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology said.

Curiosity has so far sent back low-resolution pictures and a low-quality video showing the final two and a half minutes of its descent. The rover is expected to send back a 360-degree color view… Continue reading...

Though all the Olympic medals have already been awarded in slalom canoe, Google's still giving you a shot to test your paddling chops.

Thursday's whimsical illustration lets you race down a river, navigating turns with the left and right arrow keys. You'll face challenges during the course, including the river's bends, rocks and poles.

Once you get the hang of the game, you'll realize that paddling more quickly between the right and left keys will get you to the finish line faster.

While Facebook, geotagged apps and smartphone payments move us toward a digital future marked in large part by dissipating anonymity, an iOS app launched Wednesday does just the opposite.

It's called Burner and it gives your iPhone a temporary additional number you can use without casual acquaintances, abrasive associates or unwanted eavesdroppers being able to get a line on your actual line. You can use it to call or text, share contact info on social media and set specific notifications settings separate from your actual regular number.

"Burner is for anyone who has more than one life -- or who simply values their privacy," Greg Cohn, founder & CEO of Burner's parent company Ad Hoc… Continue reading...

Made by military aircraft manufacturer Northrop Grumman, the LEMV is designed to be a lighter-than-air cargo surveillance airship that can fly without a pilot.

It can float above combat zones for 21 days straight, and is equipped with high-tech sensors that can monitor insurgents from above, the Wall Street Journal reported. While the blimp can only tr… Continue reading...

Bike share networks are still a relatively new phenomenon in the U.S. — New York is the latest city to institute such a program. But if you're traveling abroad, these programs are a cheap and easy way to see some of your favorite cities. CityBikes aggregates bike sharing data for networks in over 40 cities in Europe, Asia and North and South America. The Android app tells you which stations are near you, how to get there and the number of bikes available. If you happen to be traveling in Paris or Barcelona, you can also receive notifications when bikes at stations near you become available. CitiyBikes is a free app available for Android on the Google Play Store.

As summer comes to an end, take the opportunity to sneak in a quick trip to a cool locale, whether it's close to home or a hop, skip and jump away. While navigating unfamiliar territory isn't always very fun, your mobile device makes life on the go a lot easier.

These 10 transportation apps will help you get around and make the most of your travels, whether you're driving in a rental car, cycling on a city-share bike or making your way though an international subway system.

Whedonites delight: Joss Whedon has signed on to write and direct the sequel to his summer tentpole flick, The Avengers.

But that's not all. Marvel Studios announced Tuesday that Whedon has signed an exclusive deal with the studio for film and television through the end of June 2015. In addition to Avengers 2, Whedon will help develop a new live-action series for Marvel Television at ABC. The studio says Whedon will "also contribute creatively to the next phase of Marvel's cinematic universe."

Vague as that line may be, the rest of the announcement is concrete and might we say, totally awesome for fans of Marvel and Whedon alike.

In the final days of the Olympics, we have been paying a lot of attention to gold — both the color and what it symbolizes. As Olympic athletes vie for the iconic medal, we took a look at how our readers view "gold" in their everyday lives.

Although the challenge was inspired by the Olympics, our readers took the theme "gold" beyond the iconic medal. We received images of golden sunsets, foliage and architecture. From a field… Continue reading...

The next generation of Samsung's Galaxy Note handset might have a flexible screen.

Not designed for bending your phone in half, the flexible screen would instead be a material that makes the screen more resilient when it comes to bumps and falls. With a flexible display, if you drop your phone on a rock it has a chance of bouncing back. Do the same thing with glass, and you're probably in for trouble.

Referred to by some as a 'phabet' the Galaxy Note falls between a traditional phone and smaller tablet in the size department. The current version of the handset has a 5.3-inch display, 1.5GHz processor, and comes packing 16GB of built-in m… Continue reading...

Quick Pitch: Mozio is a budding travel site that handles all your ground transportation needs.

Genius Idea: Find all modes of ground transportation from your airport to your end destination on one site.

World traveler David Litwak has been to 65 countries, and has lived in Paris and Estonia. And while there are plenty of travel sites on the web, "there's really no true travel search engines out there, only flight search engines," he says.

From that realization, travel site Mozio was born.

Litwak and his UC Berkeley fraternity brother Joseph Metzinizer began creating Mozio in July 2011. In the long run, their "grand vision" for Mozio is to build a compreh… Continue reading...

If you thought the Microsoft Surface was only Windows tablet worth talking about, think again. Lenovo just unveiled the first Windows 8 tablet to pack an Intel mobile chip, making it a full-on Windows PC in a very light form factor.

The product is called the ThinkPad Tablet 2 (Lenovo has never been good at naming things), and it's an impressive piece of hardware. It has a 10.1-inch screen, is 0.39 of an inch thick and weighs just 1.3 pounds.

The star of this show is Intel's Clover Trail processor, though. Before the Tablet 2, Windows 8 tablets had to be either Windows RT machines, which can't run older Windows apps and look to deliver less than the full Windows experience, or devices w… Continue reading...

Pinterest announced Wednesday that it began open registration, dropping its invite-only approach.

Users can now sign up for the social photo sharing website without waiting for an invitation, according to Pinterest's official blog. Now, prospective pinners can register using their email addresses, or log in with their Facebook or Twitter accounts.

"We're really excited to have the capacity to offer Pinterest to more people and if you're a Pinner with friends who've been waiting on the sidelines, we hope you'll let them know," the blog said.

Prior to opening up, users had to click "Request an Invite" on Pinterest.com, and enter their email address.

Sixteen-year-old Matthew Walzer's heartfelt letter to Nike's CEO, Mark Parker, is quickly spreading across Twitter through the hashtag campaign #NikeLetter. Walzer posted the letter on his blog Tuesday afternoon, hoping to make Parker aware of a "great need" for supportive, easily-fastened shoes for people with cerebral palsy.

Walzer was born two months premature, and when he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, the country's top doctors told his parents that he would never be able to walk. Against all odds, Walzer can walk with the aid of crutches and his Nike basketball sneakers, which provide ample ankle support.

Dark Knight Rises villain Bane was a pretty formidable nemesis for Bruce Wayne, but he all but crumbles when dealing with the frustratingly lazy cable guys.

The latter foil Bane's attempt to compel Wayne (a.k.a. Batman) to watch Gotham being destroyed on live TV from a prison cell. Of course, hooking that channel up presents some problems. There's no signal or power source and exotic prison pit installations present their own challenges. As Bane learns, though, the cable guys can't be charmed and little can be done to block their relentless up-selling.

Wade Michael Page, the alleged lone shooter in Sunday's vicious attack at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, was a longtime member of a neo-Nazi heavy metal band named End Apathy.

The band's lyrics are full of hateful and inflammatory messages about "getting rid" of the "enemies of the white race;" in at least one song, listeners are encouraged to "gather your guns."

End Apathy's music was easily available on MySpace as well as the website of its record label, Label 56. The band's MySpace page has since been deleted, but searches for similar bands reveals myriad online choices for followers of such music -- such as another band Wade played in, Definite Hate.

After what can only be described as a nightmare hacking experience left him with a wiped hard drive, a deleted Gmail and compromised Twitter and iCloud accounts, Wired reporter Mat Honan has been picking up the pieces of his digital life.

What made this attack particularly jarring was that the hacker didn't get into Honan's account by cracking his password. Instead, the perpetrators used public information and light social engineering to get ac… Continue reading...

The Bluth's are back -- for real this time! The first pictures taken from the set of the much-anticipated season four of Arrested Development have hit the web, thanks to tweets from cast members and fans.

Actor Jason Bateman recently turned to Twitter to release the first photo taken during filming, which is currently underway at the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, Calif.

July 10: OUYA Launches

OUYA launched its Kickstarter campaign on July 10. Besides some leaked images from AngelList the week before, it was the first most of the web had heard of the ambitious console. OUYA claimed it would run Android, be completely hackable and only retail for $99. It also incentivized developers by delivering a development SDK in each console for no extra charge. The image to the left was the only rendering released on the first day of the Kickstarter, along with the OUYA's promotional video. It only showed on half of the console's controller.

The OUYA -- the $99, hackable, Android-based console -- wraps up its KIckstarter late Wednesday night. After setting a $950,000 goal for backers, the OUYA raised more than $8 million through the crowdfunding website to help bring its prototype to market next year.

OUYA announced its intentions on July 10: to bring an affordable, modifiable console to the public that anyone could program on. It would run on Android, and you could do anything you wanted to it without voiding the warranty. Their Kickstarter page plainly states their goal: "cracking open the last closed platform: the TV."

They may be late to the app store with this one, but it will still make lots of customers happy. Bank of America has updated its iPhone app to allow users to deposit checks without having to go to the bank or an ATM.

You simply snap a picture of the front and back of the check using the app, and your money is deposited. Banking is finally truly mobile.

While it makes life more convenient, this feature is not new. USAA Bank was the first to offer it almost three years ago. Chase Bank made it available to its customers the following year.

Bank of America was the subject of public backlash and many online petitions last year when it instituted a $5 per month fee for debit card u… Continue reading...

The Oregon Ducks made a big splash in the social pond Wednesday, launching what appears to be college sports' first digital media command center to track chatter and push content across a variety of platforms.

Located deep in the bowels of Oregon's Autzen Stadium, the so-called QuackCave serves as a hub for all of the athletic program's social communications. Staffers will distribute digital storytelling and promotional content through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and other networks. They'll also monitor fan conversation to answer question and interact with passionate followers.

Oregon has one of college sports' largest and most engaged social media followings with more… Continue reading...

Whether you have a computer that operates on a Windows or Mac system, you're probably wondering if you can download the latest version of its OS.

Virtually all machines running Windows 7 will be able to operate on Windows 8, which will be released in October. Apple's OS X Mountain Lion, released July 25, runs on most Macs that can run Lion, but if your machine was made in 2007 or 2008, it might not be compatible.

John Schappert, Zynga's chief operating officer and a member of its board of directors, is resigning from both positions.

According to an Aug. 8 SEC filing, his resignation "was not tendered in connection with any disagreement with the Company on any matter relating to the Company's operations, policies or practices."

His resignation is not a terrible surprise. Late last month, reports emerged that Schappert was no longer overseeing game development. Two executives who then reported to him -- David Ko, chief mobile officer, and Steven Chiang, EVP of Zynga's games division -- began reporting directly to CEO Mark Pincus rather than Schappert.

The Internet did a two and a half twist over an image of Maroney standing on the medal stand seemingly pouting over her silver medal finish on vault. The repurposing of the expressive pic spawned the sizzlingly viral Tumblr McKayla Is Not Impressed. The site caught the attention of Maroney who tweeted a good-natured, albeit slightly lukewarm, response to the meme.

Parents already know the fear that sets in when you think your child has an ear infection.

Then there's the mind-numbing screams that your child will make during the time it takes to get to the doctor, fill out the necessary forms and wait to be seen.

All in all, an unpleasant experience for both you and your child (and your eardrums).

Now what if that process was dwindled to using your smartphone to snap a photo of your child's ear and uploading it to an app. From there, a doctor could diagnose the infection and prescribe the medicine. You'll bypass doctors' offices and lines altogether.

Mobile apps like this already exist and are attempting to simplify patient care. But r… Continue reading...

Think you bear some resemblance to U.S. President Barack Obama? Well, your likeness can't possibly be as uncanny as this guy's, who had to make a website just to bring an end to all the confusion.

I Look Like Barack Obama is more than a personal website; it's a public service. Chicago-dwelling software engineer Trevor (who asked us to withhold his last name) is informing the public that, hard as it is to believe, he is not the president of the United States.

Okay, so maybe they don't look exactly alike — or at all alike, for that matter. But it's a clever campaign and we're totally going with it.

To address the skeptics that are perhaps less inclined to play along, Trevor us… Continue reading...